Iran Launches Ballistic Missiles at Israel: Live News Updates
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on October 1, 2024
Iran is poised to launch an attack on Israel in the coming hours, according to the Israeli government and two U.S. officials.
The Israeli military said Israel had been informed about preparations for the attack by the United States government.
Three Israeli officials said the attack would involve unmanned drones and missiles fired toward Israel. One of the U.S. officials said it would involve ballistic missiles, while the second said that it was unclear what kind of attack would be launched. The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.
Any attack would significantly raise the risk of an all-out war between Israel and Iran, including its proxies across the Middle East. For years, the two countries have fought a shadow war, with Iran seeking Israel’s destruction and Israel seeking to blunt Iran’s regional influence, destroy its nuclear program and unseat its government.
Now they are moving closer to direct confrontation, after a year of rising conflict between Israel and several Iranian allies including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi militia in Yemen.The rise in tensions follows Israel’s decision over the past month to escalate its attacks on Hezbollah, including by assassinating the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike last week, and culminating in its overnight invasion of southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Iran has faced rising pressure to come to Hezbollah’s aid but has been caught between the desire to protect its proxy and sustain its own prestige and influence, and the need to avoid a devastating counterattack from Israel that could wreck its nuclear program or kill senior Iranian leaders.
The three Israeli officials said that the target of the new Iranian attack would be three military air bases, as well as an intelligence headquarters north of Tel Aviv, which was evacuated on Tuesday afternoon.
Iran last fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel in April, after Israeli warplanes fired strikes that killed several top Iranian commanders as they visited Syria. At that time, an all-out war was avoided after both sides chose to de-escalate. Six months later, diplomats and experts say that a full-scale war is much likelier, with Israel expected to strike back hard after any new Iranian attack.
A group of Israel’s allies, led by the United States, helped intercept most of the missiles and drones in April, resulting in only limited damage to Israeli infrastructure.
Unlike the air and naval defensive effort in April that was pulled together by American commanders on the fly, the intervening months have allowed the United States and its allies to work out in detail access for U.S. warplanes to fly in the airspace of several countries, coordinate flight patterns to best knock down any Iranian drones or missiles and even review various Iranian attack scenarios, the U.S. military official said.
Still, U.S. officials said it was difficult to predict exactly how Iran might attack this time.
Helene Cooper, Farnaz Fassihi and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.